Tips and Tricks with GNOME

You can add several programs to your GNOME panel without making it look cluttered by putting the additions into a drawer. Right-click on the panel and select "Add drawer." Now you can drag and drop programs to the open spot on the drawer to add them and select an icon that will be displayed on the drawer. You can then open or close the drawer, and run programs from it by clicking on their icons.

You can add several programs to your GNOME panel without making it look cluttered by putting the additions into a drawer. Right-click on the panel and select “Add drawer.” Now you can drag and drop programs to the open spot on the drawer to add them and select an icon that will be displayed on the drawer. You can then open or close the drawer, and run programs from it by clicking on their icons.

You can add icons for your mountable drives to the GNOME panel. Right-click on the panel, select “Add applet,” then “Utility,” and “Drive Mount.” This will add a small icon that looks like a floppy disk drive to your panel. You can right-click on the icon and select the “Properties…” entry from the menu to configure it to work with the proper drive and change its icon. You can then mount and unmount that drive by left-clicking on the icon.

If you want to use the scroll wheel on an Intellimouse-compatible PS/2 mouse under GNOME, you can edit the file /etc/X11/ XF86Config and make sure the lines:

ZAxisMapping 4 5
Protocol “imps/2″

are in the “Pointer” section, and also make sure that any line in that section that begins with “Emulate3″ is commented out (the line begins with a #). Restart your X session, and then the wheel should work. (Make a backup copy of XF86Config before you modify it!)

When dragging and dropping files from the file pane to the tree pane in the GNOME file manager (GNU Midnight Commander), or between the desktop and the file manager, the default action is to move the file. If you hold down the Ctrl key when you drag and drop, the file will be copied instead, and your mouse icon will have a “+” added to it while you’re dragging the file.

When selecting files in the GNOME File Manager for some operation, you can hold down the Ctrl key and left click on files to add them to or subtract them from the group. If you hold down the Shift key when you click, all files from the one you previously clicked on to the current one will be added to the selection.

You can add application launchers for programs to the GNOME panel by simply dragging them from Midnight Commander and dropping them onto the panel. GNOME will prompt you to set the properties of the launcher, such as its icon. You can then run the program by left-clicking on its panel icon.

State of Affairs: GNOME’s System Info utility provides a quick
summary of your system state

If you frequently need to issue commands but don’t need to see the output, you can use GNOME’s Mini-Commander on your panel. Right-click on the panel, select “Add applet,” then “Utility,” and “Mini-Commander.” This will add an applet that has a small input box into which you can type commands.

If you need a quick summary of your system information, open the main menu (click on the GNOME button on the panel) and then select the “Utilities” submenu and the “System info…” item. This will display a dialog with a summary of your system, and you can get more details about your CPU and memory and disk usage by clicking on the “Detailed information…” button.